In this article I argue that the value of epistemic justification cannot be adequately explained as being instrumental to truth. I intend to show that false belief, which is no means to truth, can nevertheless still be of epistemic value. This in turn will make a good prima facie case that justification is valuable for its own sake. If this is right, we will have also found reason to think that truth value monism is false: assuming that true belief does (...) have value, there is more of final epistemic value than mere true belief. (shrink)

I argue that the conjunction of perdurantism (the view that objects are temporally extended) and universalism (the thesis that any old class of things has a mereological fusion) gives rise to undesired complications when combined with certain plausible assumptions concerning the semantics of tensed statements.

Literature in epistemology tends to suppose that there are three main types of understanding – propositional, atomistic, and objectual. By showing that all apparent instances of propositional understanding can be more plausibly explained as featuring one of several other epistemic states, this paper argues that talk of propositional understanding is unhelpful and misleading. The upshot is that epistemologists can do without the notion of propositional understanding.

Much of the intuitive appeal of evidentialism results from conflating two importantly different conceptions of evidence. This is most clear in the case of perceptual justification, where experience is able to provide evidence in one sense of the term, although not in the sense that the evidentialist requires. I argue this, in part, by relying on a reading of the Sellarsian dilemma that differs from the version standardly encountered in contemporary epistemology, one that is aimed initially at the epistemology of (...) introspection but which generalizes to theories of perceptual justification as well. (shrink)

Human cognitive acts are directed towards objects extended in space of a wide range of different types. What follows is a new proposal for bringing order into this typological clutter. The theory of spatially extended objects should make room not only for the objects of physics but also for objects at higher levels, including the objects of geography and of related disciplines. It should leave room for different types of boundaries, including both the bona fide boundaries which we find in (...) the physical world and the fiat (or human-demarcation-induced) boundaries with which much of geography has to deal. Two distinct axiomatic theories of boundaries are accordingly presented, and the need for both is examined in some detail. The resultant dual framework is shown to have application above all for our understanding of issues involving contact, division, and separation, issues which have posed serious difficulties for the ontological theories of boundaries that have been proposed hitherto. (shrink)

Epistemic internalism, by stressing the indispensability of the subject’s perspective, strikes many as plausible at first blush. However, many people have tended to reject the position because certain kinds of beliefs have been thought to pose special problems for epistemic internalism. For example, internalists tend to hold that so long as a justifier is available to the subject either immediately or upon introspection, it can serve to justify beliefs. Many have thought it obvious that no such view can be correct, (...) as it has been alleged that internalism cannot account for the possibility of the justification of beliefs stored in memory. -/- My aim in this paper is to offer a response that explains how memory justification is possible in a way that is consistent with epistemic internalism and an awareness condition on justification. Specifically, I will explore the plausibility of various options open to internalists, including both foundationalist and non-foundationalist approaches to the structure of justification. I intend to show that despite other difficult challenges that epistemic internalism might face, memory belief poses no special problems that the resources of internalism cannot adequately address. (shrink)

Many advocate practices of ‘local food’ or ‘locavorism’ as a partial solution to the injustices and unsustainability of contemporary food systems. I think that there is much to be said in favor of local food movements, but these virtues are insufficient to immunize locavorism from criticism. In particular, three duties of international ethics—beneficence, repair and fairness—may provide reasons for constraining the developed world’s permissible pursuit of local food. A complete account of why (and how) the fulfillment of these duties constrains (...) locavorism will require extensive empirical evidence about the relationship between agricultural demand-led industrialization, international trade (rules), and local food practices. In this paper I can only gesture at some of this evidence and, for that reason, my policy prescriptions are merely provisional. Instead, the upshot of this paper is that advocates of locavorism ought to be attentive to the empirical-dependence of the moral permissibility of their projects. As local food ‘scales up’—and comes to be embraced as a goal of political communities—these concerns should receive even greater attention. (shrink)

Many assume that whenever government is entitled to make a law, it is entitled to enforce that law coercively. I argue that the justification of legal authority and the justification of governmental coercion come apart. Both in ideal theory and in actual human societies, governments are sometimes entitled to make laws that they are not entitled to enforce coercively.

Recent work by Peijnenburg, Atkinson, and Herzberg suggests that infinitists who accept a probabilistic construal of justification can overcome significant challenges to their position by attending to mathematical treatments of infinite probabilistic regresses. In this essay, it is argued that care must be taken when assessing the significance of these formal results. Though valuable lessons can be drawn from these mathematical exercises (many of which are not disputed here), the essay argues that it is entirely unclear that the form of (...) infinitism that results meets a basic requirement: namely, providing an account of infinite chains of propositions qua reasons made available to agents. (shrink)

Quine’s desert is generally contrasted with Meinong’s jungle, as a sober ontological alternative to the exuberant luxuriance that comes with the latter. Here I focus instead on the desert as a sober metaphysical alternative to the Aristotelian garden, with its tidily organized varieties of flora and fauna neatly governed by fundamental laws that reflect the essence of things and the way they can be, or the way they must be. In the desert there are no “natural joints”; all the boundaries (...) we find are lines we have drawn, artificial fencings that merely reflect of our own demarcations, our classifications, our desperate need to ward off the flux and meet an excusable but ungrounded demand for order and stability. The desert returns a picture of reality that is radically anti-realist. And yet the picture does not amount to a form of irrealism. The desert is out there and is what it is regardless of how we feel. And it is not completely structureless. It’s just that the structure it has is very thin and does not correspond to the sort of structure that so-called metaphysical realists—and scientific realists alike—tend to attribute to it. (shrink)

A graph-theoretic account of fibring of logics is developed, capitalizing on the interleaving characteristics of fibring at the linguistic, semantic and proof levels. Fibring of two signatures is seen as a multi-graph (m-graph) where the nodes and the m-edges include the sorts and the constructors of the signatures at hand. Fibring of two models is a multi-graph (m-graph) where the nodes and the m-edges are the values and the operations in the models, respectively. Fibring of two deductive systems is an (...) m-graph whose nodes are language expressions and the m-edges represent the inference rules of the two original systems. The sobriety of the approach is confirmed by proving that all the fibring notions are universal constructions. This graph-theoretic view is general enough to accommodate very different fibrings of propositional based logics encompassing logics with non-deterministic semantics, logics with an algebraic semantics, logics with partial semantics and substructural logics, among others. Soundness and weak completeness are proved to be preserved under very general conditions. Strong completeness is also shown to be preserved under tighter conditions. In this setting, the collapsing problem appearing in several combinations of logic systems can be avoided. (shrink)

In "Evil and the Justice of God", N.T. Wright presses the point that attempting to solve the philosophical problem of evil is an immature response to the existence of evil--a response that belittles the real problem of evil, which is just the fact that evil is bad and needs to be dealt with. As you might expect, I am not inclined to endorse this sort of sweeping indictment of the entire field of research on the philosophical problem of evil. (I (...) sort of doubt that Wright really meant to either.) But I do think that there is a kernel of truth in what I take to be Wright's fundamental objection to attempts to solve the philosophical problem of evil. In the first section of what follows, I will try briefly to explain why. I will then go on to argue that, despite this fact, certain efforts at solving the problem of evil avoid Wright's objection. Indeed, drawing on recent work by Elenore Stump, I will argue that one perfectly legitimate way to try to solve the philosophical problem of evil is to follow precisely what seems to be the main piece of advice in "Evil and the Justice of God": namely, to look more seriously than we have at the attitudes taken toward evil by human authors of and characters in the Bible, and to attend more carefully to what the Bible says about how God deals with evil. (shrink)

For any given society, its particular technology of communication has far-reaching consequences, not merely as regards social organization, but on the epistemic level as well. Plato's name-theory of meaning represents the transition from the age of primary orality to that of literacy; Wittgenstein's use-theory of meaning stands for the transition from the age of literacy to that of a second orality (audiovisual communication, electronic information processing). On the basis of a use-theory of meaning the problem of machine consciousness, to which (...) the later Wittgenstein again and again returned, is capable of a non-essentialist solution: appropriate changes in our form of life might well entail a radically different psychological language-game. (shrink)

This is a supplement to our book "Le tribolazioni del filosofare. Comedia metaphysica ne la quale si tratta de li errori & de le pene de l’Infero". It features an entirely new canto of the poem (originally thought to be lost) along with an extensive commentary. The canto covers the first ring of the circle of the Sullen, which hosts the Adverse to the Possible, and deals with several philosophical questions concerning the metaphysics of modality.

This article aims to serve as an accessible introduction to the idea of "ontotheology" and to the so-called "ontotheological critique of Western metaphysics" for which the twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger is especially well known. I begin by distinguishing two uses of "ontotheology" employed respectively by Kant and Heidegger, and go on to develop the Heideggerian interpretation and critique of ontotheology under three main headings: The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Western Metaphysics; Ontotheology's Problematic Legacy: Anxiety, Calculation, Oblivion; and Ontotheology and God. (...) The article concludes with an annotated bibliography of helpful resources for learning more about ontotheology, the critique of ontotheology, and directions the critique has taken after Heidegger. (shrink)

In this essay, the tension that Benacerraf identifies for theories of mathematical truth is used as the vehicle for arguing against a particular desideratum for semantic theories. More specifically, I place in question the desideratum that a semantic theory, provided for some area of discourse, should run in parallel with the semantic theory holding for the rest of the language. The importance of this desideratum is also made clear by means of tracing out the subtle implications of its rejection.

Though most children can easily answer the question, "Who's your daddy?", the concept of paternity is complex and multifaceted. Courts have stumbled in answering it. In order to ground paternal rights and obligations in a satisfactory way, we need to disaggregate the various elements of stereotypical paternity. It is not sufficient merely to separate social from biological paternity. The latter concept, itself, is complex. We need to separate the procreative element of paternity from the genetic relationship.

We should not be creating conscious, humanoid agents but an entirely new sort of entity, rather like oracles, with no conscience, no fear of death, no distracting loves and hates.

Leibniz said that the universe, if God-created, would exist at a unique, conjoint, physical maximum: Of all possible worlds, it would be richest in phenomena, but its richness would arise from the simplest physical laws and initial conditions. Using concepts of ‘‘variety’’ and algorithmic informational complexity, Leibniz’ claim can be reframed as a testable theory. This theory predicts that the laws and conditions of the actual universe should be simpler, and the universe richer in phenomena, than the presence of observers (...) would require. Tegmark has shown that inhabitants of an infinite multiverse would likely observe simple laws and conditions, but also phenomenal richness just great enough to explain their existence. Empirical observations fit the claim of divine choice better than the claim of an infinite multiverse. The future of the universe, including its future information-processing capacity, is predicted to be endless. -/- . (shrink)

We cannot disregard that the neuroscientific research on religious phenomena such as religious experiences and rituals for example, has increased significantly the last years. Neuroscientists claim that neuroscience contributes considerably in the process of understanding religious experiences, because neuroscience is able to measure brain activity during religious experiences by way of brain‐imaging technologies. No doubt, those results of neuroscientific research on religious experiences are an important supplement to the understanding of some types of religious experiences. However, some conclusions drawn from (...) neuroscientific research on religious experiences are arguable. For example, one such conclusion is that religious experiences are actually nothing but neural activity, i.e. there is nothing ‘religious’ to the experiences at all. Another such conclusion is that a person’s religious experiences actually derive from some ultimate reality, meaning that religious experiences are real. It is the latter assertion that will be analyzed in the present paper. The question is asked whether neuroscience alone is able to affirm that religious experiences are real or whether there are, besides neuroscientific issues, also cultural‐religious assumptions that underlie this conclusion. (shrink)

A compact overview of the main formal theories of parthood and of their mutual relationships, up to Classical Extensional Mereology. Written as an Appendix to the other essays included in the volume.

I defend the thesis that psychological states can be literally ascribed only to living creatures and not to nonliving machines, such as sophisticated robots. Defenders of machine consciousness do not sufficiently appreciate the importance of the biological nature of a subject for the psychological significance of its behavior. Simulations of a computer-controlled, nonliving autonomous robot cannot carry the same psychological meaning as animate behavior. Being a living creature is an essential link between genuinely expressive behavior and justified psychological ascriptions.

This article encourages a reconsideration of Christian sociology. It explains how deism makes a decisive impact in the theoretical foundations of the discipline. Dutch neocalvinistic philosophy in its North American immigrant setting after World War II issued a challenge which drew attention to the dogmas of deism implicit in sociology, but this challenge has not been met. Christian sociology, however, still retains its God-given vocation to find ways to encourage people everywhere to positively form complex differentiated social settings in the (...) Spirit of the Suffering and Glorified Messiah. (shrink)

Judith Butler’s influential work in feminist theory is significant for its insight that sexist discourse in popular culture affects the agency and consciousness of individuals, but offers an inadequate account of how such discourse might be said to touch, shape, or affect selves. Supplementing Butler’s account of signification with a Deweyan pragmatic account of meaning-making and selective emphasis enables a consistent account of the relationship between discourse and subjectivity with a robust conception of the bodily organism. An analysis of the (...) popular discourse surrounding Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Presidential campaign demonstrates why this hybrid pragmatic/poststructuralist account is necessary. (shrink)

This is a summarised version of my MSocSc Thesis "The development of 'The Structure of Social Action' in the Early Writings of Talcott Parsons" written in 1978 under the supervision of Professor David Bettison.

In ‘Something to Do with Vagueness ...’, Linda Burns defends an analogy between the informational and the borderline-case variety of vagueness. She argues that the latter is in fact less extraordinary and less disastrous than people in the tradition of Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright have told us. However, her account involves presuppositions that cannot be taken for granted. Here is to take a closer look at some of these presuppositions and argue hat they may—when left unguarded—undermine much of Burns’ (...) general account. (shrink)

This research note is penned in honour of Johan Vander Hoeven on his retirement as Editor-in-Chief of Philosophia Reformata. It is to acknowledge his helpful contribution to the critical exposition of phenomenology. I first read his work almost 30 years ago and it challenged me to develop a sympathetic Christian critique of this philosophical movement. This note is to offer some reflection upon the Christian interpretation of phenomeology. In particular, it raises questions about how some famous phrases, one by Dilthey, (...) the other by Husserl, have been construed. (shrink)

I articulate and the defend the following two claims: (i) it is a mistake to think that the structure of the world should mirror the structure of the theories by which we represent it, and through which we try to decipher it, simply because those theories appear to work; (ii) among the most deplorable consequences of this mistake is the widespread tendency to think that there must be a plurality of realities, or several different and irreducible levels of a stratified (...) reality, merely because our credo includes a plurality of theories each of which appears to be as important and trustworthy as it is irreducible to (if not overtly in conflict with) the others. (shrink)

Certain consequentialists have responded to deontological worries regarding personal projects or options and agent-centered restrictions or constraints by pointing out that it is consistent with consequentialist principles that people develop within themselves, dispositions to act with such things in mind, even if doing so does not lead to the best consequences on every occasion. This paper argues that making this response requires shifting the focus of moral evaluation off of evaluation of individual actions and towards evaluation of whole character traits (...) and patterns of behavior. However, this weds consequentialism to a sort of psychological determinism, with which it is incompatible, because it makes any sort of assessment in terms of right or wrong incoherent. The paper concludes by sketching an ethical theory that abandons right and wrong as its organizing concepts, but nevertheless preserves much of the spirit of consequentialism. Relationships between whole patterns of behavior and the production of good and bad consequences can be studied and analyzed, and this information can be used to improve society and ourselves, without it being required that any individual persons acts or dispositions to behave be evaluated as right or wrong. (shrink)

This article explores the meeting of two approaches towards philosophy and education: the philosophy for children approach advocated by Lipman and others, and Schmid’s philosophical concept of Lebenskunst. Schmid explores the concept of the beautiful or good life by asking what is necessary for each individual to be able to develop their own art of living and which aspects of life are significant when shaping a good and beautiful life. One element of Schmid’s theory is the practical application of philosophy (...) through the notions of Bildung, reflection, prudence and practical wisdom, as well as the requirement for each individual to take responsibility for actively shaping their life as an artwork. In this sense, each person is the artist responsible for living their own beautiful life. We argue that there are useful parallels between Schmid’s concept of the art of living and P4C, such as the ideal of a holistic philosophy that is “lived.” The pragmatic approach of P4C focuses on the embodied learner who practices critical, caring and creative thinking. Both P4C and Schmid’s theory are reminiscent of the Aristotelian notion of practical wisdom, which allows for an approach to an education for life that prepares students to develop their own art of living. (shrink)

K. R. Popper distinguished between two main uses of logic, the demonstrational one, in mathematical proofs, and the derivational one, in the empirical sciences. These two uses are governed by the following methodological constraints: in mathematical proofs one ought to use minimal logical means (logical minimalism), while in the empirical sciences one ought to use the strongest available logic (logical maximalism). In this paper I discuss whether Popper’s critical rationalism is compatible with a revision of logic in the empirical sciences, (...) given the condition of logical maximalism. Apparently, if one ought to use the strongest logic in the empirical sciences, logic would remain immune to criticism and, thus, non-revisable. I will show that critical rationalism is theoretically compatible with a revision of logic in the empirical sciences. However, a question that remains to be clarified by the critical rationalists is what kind of evidence would lead them to revise the system of logic that underlies a physical theory, such as quantum mechanics? Popper’s falsificationist methodology will be compared with the recently advocated extension of the abductive methodology from the empirical sciences to logic by T. Williamson, since both of them arrive at the same conclusion concerning the status of classical logic. (shrink)

The following argument is widely assumed to be invalid: there is a pain in my finger; my finger is in my mouth; therefore, there is a pain in my mouth. The apparent invalidity of this argument has recently been used to motivate the conclusion that pains are not spatial entities. We argue that this is a mistake. We do so by drawing attention to the metaphysics of pains and holes and provide a framework for their location which both vindicates the (...) argument's validity and explains why it appears invalid. To this end, we show that previously proposed explanations for the apparent invalidity of the argument fail. Moreover, we show that our account accommodates and explains seemingly opposing linguistic data. We conclude that the ‘pain-in-mouth argument’ does not undermine the view that pains are spatial entities. (shrink)

Ang layunin ng artikulong ito ay tuklasin ang konsepto ng pag-asa ng mga Pilipino sa suwerte sa pamamagitan ng pagtaya sa lotto. Tatalakayin ditto ang kahulugan ng mga paniniwala at saloobin ng mga Pilipino tungkol sa kapalaran at kayamanan, lalo na sa konteksto ng pagtaya sa lottery. Tinalakay din sa artikulo ang kahalagahan ng sikolohiyang Pilipino sa pagsusuri ng pag-asa ng mga Pilipino sa suwerte at lottery. Layunin ng artikulong ito na: (1) Malaman ang epekto ng paniniwala sa suwerte at (...) malas sa pagtaya sa lotto sa pangarap at pagkilos ng mga Pilipino sa iba't ibang aspeto ng buhay, (2) Paano nakakaapekto ang popularidad ng lotto sa mga mahihirap na sektor ng lipunan, at ano ang potensyal na mga banta at pinsala nito (3) Mga sikolohiyang Pilipinong masasalamin sa paniniwala ng mga Pilipino ukol sa lotto bilang isang instrumento ng pag-asang pangkabuhayan, at ano ang mga implikasyon nito sa lipunang Pilipino. Ang mga natuklasan at ang kanilang mga implikasyon ay maaaring mag-ambag sa ating pag-unawa sa mga pangunahing sanhi at epekto ng pag-asa ng mga Pilipino sa suwerte na may kaugnayan sa lotto, at maaaring humantong sa mga reporma at solusyon upang matugunan ang mga kaugnay na isyu. Sa huli, ang artikulong ito ay naglalayong magbigay ng mas malalim na kaalaman at pag-unawa sa kulturang Pilipino ng pag-asa at paniniwala na may kaugnayan sa suwerte at kapalaran. (shrink)

A defense of the value of studying what Aristotle, in the Politics, refers to as useless things, and thereby a defense of the 'uselessness' of the study of the liberal arts.

In Van Cleve's "Problems from Kant," it is suggested that his interpretation of Kant's metaphysics resolves the problem of "The Neglected Alternative"--the worry that Kant failed to consider that space and time, while perhaps necessary for sensible intuition, could also be objectively real in-themselves. However, it is far from clear how Van Cleve is supposed to have solved this objection. This paper examines why Van Cleve might have thought the problem resolved on his view, and argues that there is no (...) reason to think the problem has in fact been resolved. (shrink)

The primary aim of this discussion is to present a detailed case study of Descartes’ use of émotion in Les passions de l’ame and in his early writings leading up to that work. A secondary aim is to argue that while Descartes was innovative in suggesting that émotion might be a better keyword for the affective sciences than passion, he did not consistently follow his own advice. His innovation therefore failed in that regard, even though it did inspire later thinkers (...) to explore the distinction between “passion” and “emotion” in their own manner. (shrink)

This essay explicates the primary interpretative import of B1: 31-32 in Parmenides poem (On Nature)—lines which have radical implications for the overall argument, and which the traditional arrangement forces into an irreconcilable dilemma. I argue that the “negative” reading of lines 31-32 is preferable, even on the traditional arrangement. This negative reading denies that a third thing is to be taught to the reader by the goddess—a positive account of how the apparent world is to be “acceptably” understood. I then (...) suggest that a rearrangement of the fragments would make more sense overall, while further supporting the “negative” reading as more natural and coherent. In particular, the rearrangement dispels the objection that, “if mortal opinions were not true, why would Parmenides include such a lengthy false account of the apparent world--an account which explicitly denies the conclusions of the earlier section, Truth?”. (shrink)

Decades of debate about scientific realism notwithstanding, we find ourselves bemused by what different philosophers appear to think it is, exactly. Does it require any sort of belief in relation to scientific theories and, if so, what sort? Is it rather typified by a certain understanding of the rationality of such beliefs? In the following dialogue we explore these questions in hopes of clarifying some convictions about what scientific realism is, and what it could or should be. En route, we (...) encounter some profoundly divergent conceptions of the nature of science and of philosophy. (shrink)

Any ethical inquiry into addiction research is faced with the preliminary challenge that the term “addiction” is itself a matter of scientific and ethical controversy. Accordingly, the chapter begins with a brief history of the term “addiction.” The chapter then turns to ethical issues surrounding consent and decision-making capacity viewed from the perspective of the current opioid epidemic. One concern is the neglect of the cyclical nature of addiction and the implications of this for the validity of current psychometric instruments (...) used to evaluate decision-making capacity in addiction. Another is the apparent discrepancy—possibly an ethical double standard—in the manner in which society and addiction researchers view the mental capacity and vulnerability of individuals who suffer from severe addiction. On the whole, the main ethical concern of the chapter is the puzzling lack of clinical research on decision-making capacity in research on addiction. (shrink)

The chapter traces the history of psychiatric ethics with a focus on the emergence of autonomy and how assumptions and thresholds surrounding informed consent and decision-making capacity have changed over the centuries. Innovators like Philippe PInel and William Tuke are featured in this account of how the 'mad' and the abuses of the 'domestication paradigm' of madness eventually gave way to more humanitarian approaches of treating the 'mad', like moral treatment. The chapter closes with a brief reflection regarding the limits (...) of autonomy and the decline of paternalism in psychiatric ethics. (shrink)

The mythical bronze creature Talos (Greek: Τάλως) was worshiped initially as the god of light or the sun in the Hellenic Island of Crete. He is supposed to have lived in the peak Kouloukona of the Tallaia Mountains in the Gerontospelio cave. His relation towards bronze and fire and his continuous voyage circling the island of Crete most probably introduces the concept of the change of the four seasons. The sun was considered in the area of the South-East Mediterranean nations (...) as just judge, a guardian who monitors and judges from above all the actions of the commoners, a controller for the faithful application of laws in Crete [1]. Hesychios in his Lexicon notes that talos means sun and that the name Tallaios was initially attributed to Zeus [2]. The birth of the Olympian gods forged a new Pantheon and nomenclature forcing some of the old gods to fell into lower deities. This happened to Talos who soon became a mythical hero [1]. According to Apollodorus, the bronze creature was forged by the magnificent constructor Hephaestus as a gift to the mythical King Minoa to help him guard the island [3]. Although the verb “peritrohazo” (Greek: περιτροχαζω) was used, meaning a movement in a steady orbit (track), some depictions image him as a winged being. To protect the island, he was throwing rocks into unknown ships or in the case of a foreign landing he was burning with fire or with his flamed bronze body the intruders. He was holding copper plates with the laws of the island and his circle allowed him to pass all island sores three times daily [1,4-6]. Plato, speaks of him as a real person, suggesting he was the brother of King Rhadamanthys, thus a son of Zeus [5]. Talos may be considered as the token of the Cretan power, a symbol of technological development in the field of metalworking in prehistoric and Minoan times. An animated, programmed gigantic android to enforce its will. A primitive robot for basic actions having a power source, fire and ichor (Greek: ιχώρ) the sacred fluid in the vessels of the gods. The first manufactured being with his individual intelligence, a primary concept of artificial intelligence (AI) [7]. -/- Homer was the first to introduce the term automata (Greek: αυτόματα), to describe ingenious machines built by the supreme blacksmith god of invention and technology, God of metal and fire, Hephaestus, manufactured devices “acting of one’s own will” as the Hellenic word indicates [8]. Eons later, the humanoid automaton the “Automa cavaliere” (English: Automaton knight) appeared in the court of the nobleman and Duke of Milan Ludovico Maria Sforza. It was the year 1495, when Leonardo da Vinci presented his robotic knight, an innovative construction operated by a series of pulleys and cables, presenting though no individual mind. Although it was manufactured by a highly intelligent polymath, it could only be operated through an outer intelligence [9]. Advancements made during the Fourth Industrial Revolution allowed modern technology to manufacture intelligent machines to aid the field of invasive surgery. One of those most sophisticated devises is the da Vince Surgical Tower. -/- Launched in the setting of the 21st century, the DaVinci System is one of the most commonly employed tools/systems, which has prevailed in the field of robotic-assisted surgery [10]. One could claim that it practically reshaped the concept of surgery, providing doctors with immense capabilities, aiming towards the optimal post-operative outcome. Through visual augmentation, high resolution 3D video, enhanced precision and reduced complication rates [11] the DaVinci Si and the latest DaVinci Xi system have been implemented in a variety of surgeries, including but not limited to general, urologic, gynecologic, thoracic and even cardiac procedures; valve and coronary artery bypass graft operations [12,13]. Da Vinci is cleared globally for cardiosurgery and came in vogue to fulfill the dream of cardiac surgeons to operate in closet chest. It offers in patients the same benefits as those that open chest incision surgery procedures do [14]. -/- The more recent DaVinci Xi model was introduced to counteract commonly known drawbacks of the Si system, such as the inability to simultaneously manipulate the different abdominal quadrants [10]. It consists of four boom mounted robotic arms along with a mobile platform and a master console. The latter with the adaptable intraocular distance, the cushioned headrest, the modifiable arm bars and the flexible finger loops, is meticulously designed to meet the surgeon´s “demands” [12]. Every robotic arm has three degrees of freedom, which combined with the EndoWrist technology to imitate the delicate motion of the surgeon´s hand, acquires an extra seven degrees of freedom. Evidently, the combination of the user-friendly interface, the high-quality 3D intraoperative images, the multiple joints and sensors, as well as the surgeon himself, who can learn to handle the DaVinci Xi Surgical System in a relatively short period of time, has established the model in the surgical armamentarium, paving the way towards a continuously progressive future of minimally invasive and robotic surgery (Figure 1) [12]. -/- History testifies that the nomination of the AI surgical tower as da Vinci was wrongfully given to commemorate a majestic historical figure. It is clear that the mythical creature Talos which was fabricated by the ingenious god Hephaestus was the first true automaton in the line of AI origins. (shrink)

The primary interpretative challenge for understanding Parmenides’ poem revolves around explaining both the meaning of, and the relationship between, its two primary sections: a) the positively endorsed metaphysical arguments which describe some unified, unchanging, motionless, and eternal “reality”, and b) the ensuing cosmology, which incorporates the very principles explicitly denied in Aletheia. I will refer to this problem as the “A-D Paradox.” I advocate resolving this paradoxical relationship by reading Parmenides’ poem as a ring-composition, and incorporating a modified version of (...) Palmer’s modal interpretation of Aletheia. On my interpretation, Parmenides’ thesis in Aletheia is not a counter-intuitive description of how all the world must truly be, but rather a radical rethinking of divine nature. Understanding Aletheia in this way, the ensuing “cosmology” can be straightforwardly rejected as an exposition of how traditional, mythopoetic accounts have misled mortals in their understanding of divinity. Not only does this interpretative view provide a resolution to the A-D Paradox, it offers a more holistic account of the poem by making the opening lines of introduction integral to understanding Parmenides’ message. By setting forth its own unacceptable fiction, paralleling the elements of the Doxa in a ring-composition, the Proem simultaneously establishes the scope of the ensuing inquiry, and its target. Maintaining Parmenides’ historical position as the “father of metaphysics,” the narrative that he advanced a strictly secular account of all reality is challenged. Instead, Parmenides is best understood as further advancing Xenophanes’ criticisms of traditional religion, an intellectual relationship which the ancient testimonia strongly supports. (shrink)

In this book Alan Haworth tends to sneer at libertarians. However, there are, I believe, a few sound criticisms. I have always held similar opinions of Murray Rothbard‟s and Friedrich Hayek‟s definitions of liberty and coercion, Robert Nozick‟s account of natural rights, and Hayek‟s spontaneous-order arguments. I urge believers of these positions to read Haworth. But I don‟t personally know many libertarians who believe them (or who regard Hayek as a libertarian).

The main foci of this paper are to delineate the distinction between appearance and reality in the light of Sree Sankara’s Advaita Philosophy and to look at how Sankara’s notion of appearance and reality is enjoying a contemporary revival, and it is important to try to develop an understanding of why this is so. The central theme of the notion of Sankara philosophy is that Brahman or the absolute spirit is the only reality and everything else is an illusory appearance (...) of Brahman. The major essence of Sankara’s Philosophy can be expressed in the form of a half verse, ‘Brahma Satyam Jagat Mitya Jivo Brahmaiva Na apara' which means ‘Brahman is real the world is unreal and the so-called jiva nondifferent from Brahman'. In the current consciousness study, Sree Sankara’s notion of Brahman and Jagat is so conundrum in the material life of postmodern people. But it is inevitable to believe that Sree Sankara’s philosophy is not a conundrum for common people in contemporary society but the very conundrum for the non-common people. (shrink)